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Volume CXXXIII, Number 17 |
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Bowdoin women bare all for V-Day art show
LEAH CHERNIKOFF
STAFF WRITER
Nudity tends to stir up controversy, and the "Naked Body Image Project," a component of the V-Day Art Show in conjunction with Eating Disorder Awareness Week, is no exception.
The art show opened last night in the Chamberlain Art Gallery, located on the third floor of Chamberlain Hall. It will run through March 18.
While the show displays a plethora of submissions concerning women in art-ranging in medium from poetry, to painting, to sculpture-it is the "Naked Body Image Project," advertised separately, that portends to be the focus of the show.
The "Naked Body Image Project" was born of noble intentions: to photograph women's naked bodies in order to promote a healthy embrace of the beauty of women's bodies in all their varied forms, combating the "Barbie" image of the perfect woman as portrayed by the media.
Many women, however, including Barbara Condliffe '04 and Kristin Pollock '04, chairs of V-Day, were worried that the manner in which the "Naked Body Image Project" was advertised would result in a rather antithetical message. They were anxious that the proliferation of Xeroxed images of naked women's bodies might perpetuate the objectification of women and the facilitation of violence against them. One participant, whose photo was used in the advertisements, felt that seeing her naked body on an isolated poster next to an ad for "discount fares on Concord Trailways" detracted from the integrity of the project, as it lacked context.
Despite worries surrounding the advertisement for the project, organizers said that the actual experience for everyone who was involved was a success. After speaking with photographers Emma Raynes '04 and Emily Hricko '06, organizer Bree Dallinga '06, and several women who posed for the project, their responses were unanimous: the experience were empowering, liberating, and beautiful.
Over 50 women participated in the project, a number Dallinga felt spoke to the "need for more openness" about women's bodies in order to "break the silence" that so often blankets the way women feel about their own bodies.
Raynes and Hricko took great pains to create a dialogue with their subjects to avoid their objectification. The women who posed were given agency during the creation process, voicing what parts of the body they wanted to photograph versus body parts they felt uncomfortable showing.
In a statement, Hricko and Raynes address their concerted efforts to portray the "dignity, pride, and strength" of their subjects while maintaining the anonymity that most requested.
"Cropping our subjects' faces proved to be a challenge," they wrote. "Without the return of the subject's gaze, you may feel as though the subject is unaware of the viewer's presence. But this is certainly not the truth of these photographic interactions. These subjects were volunteers who were well aware of the camera, and, in fact, were involved in the making of the images."
Fueled by the courage of the women she was photographing, Raynes decided that she should be naked too, creating a space of comfort and acceptance-a space that Dallinga emphasizes might otherwise be seen as "x-rated" if women do not keep making their voices heard.
Hricko and Raynes expressed their "hope" for the project as "show[ing] bodies of proud women the way they wanted to be represented" so that other women who view this show will look at their own bodies with the same "pride" as the women in the photographs.
This art show, particularly the "Naked Body Image Project," hopes to broaden the space of comfort and acceptance for women, in this instance, through artistic expression. Though advertising and the subject matter of the project tend to overshadow the other art, the show displays many other wonderful pieces: provocative sculptures (including one that directly confronts the "Barbie" stereotype and its subsequent consequences), beautiful paintings of women, and painstakingly-made art books.
Whether you come see the show to appreciate the hard work and talent of these artists or to see some photos of naked women, it promises to create dialogue about women and their bodies, and that is what good art aims to do: make people rethink their conceptions and talk about them.
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